Keller @ Large: Boston 2024's Last Chance

BOSTON (CBS) - Monday is the big day for Boston 2024, the group that wants to bring the 2024 Summer Olympic Games to Massachusetts.

They are rolling out their first serious, detailed plan of how this thing would work, after winning the US Olympic bid last winter with a lot of pretty drawings and wishful thinking.

If their plan is a grandiose dud built on fuzzy math, the next round of polling could be brutal, and that might provoke the U.S. Olympic Committee to dump us for L.A. If the plan is candid, interesting and pragmatic, it could turn those numbers around, and put Boston 2024 back in business.

But speaking of the polls, they've consistently shown that people do not want to take on major financial risk in order to host the Games. That is the big deal breaker, and thus, the biggest challenge Boston 2024 faces as it tries to shift public opinion.

From the beginning of this story, I have never heard USOC or Boston 2024 officials deny that there will be some level of public risk. They tried to sugarcoat it early on by bragging about a $25 million insurance policy, when the potential risk could be billions. More recently, they're mounting a case that the potential rewards are worth that risk.

But while this is a community that might like a night out at the dollar slots, I don't see much appetite for playing the billion-dollar urban redevelopment machine. We still blow tires and bend rims on the crumbling roads and bridges we got for our Big Dig wager, as if we could ever forget it.

So for Boston 2024 to get off the mat, they need to be candid and give an account of the risks that is thorough and credible.

They need to show the real return on investment, not pie-in-the-sky.

Bostonians will give you a hard time, but they'll also give you a chance.

For Boston 2024, Monday might be the last one.

Listen to Jon's commentary:

You can listen to Keller At Large on WBZ News Radio every weekday at 7:55 a.m. You can also watch Jon on WBZ-TV News.